SCANDAL IN FAIR HAVEN

Just because Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins (Dead Man's Island, 1993) has retired from reporting the news doesn't mean she's retired from asking nosy questions; and when Craig Matthews stumbles into the Tennessee vacation cottage she was to share with his stricken aunt gasping that he didn't kill his socialite wife, Patty Kay, she swiftly assumes the role of his aunt and takes up his cause. The deck is stacked against Craig — somebody went to a lot of trouble to lure him home to discover Patty Kay's body — but Henrie O, alertly noticing that there are no footprints in the cheesecake (don't ask), is sure that he's innocent and turns instead to the town's secrets, heralded by the incessant sniping of Fair Havenites. After pausing to note the obligatory adulteries — both Craig and Patty Kay were not only having active affairs but were worshiped from afar — Henrie O focuses on the links among Patty Kay's death, the suicide of Walden School student Franci Hollis a day earlier, and the murder of a bookstore clerk who maybe remembered too much about the phone call that lured Craig back home. As before, serenely self-confident Henrie O proves a paragon of sturdy, old-fashioned detection. On the evidence here, Fair Haven must be the busiest, nastiest little hamlet in the galaxy.